Vision of high-performance organizations: NDMA Inc.: The business-within-a-business paradigm
the business-within-a-business paradigm
Great leaders do more than formulate brilliant strategies, hire and inspire the right people, and make tough decisions. Great leaders build high-performance organizations that tap every bright mind, organizations in which everyone can succeed.
In doing so, they leverage their personal insights and efforts, and they leave as their legacy an organization that will prosper with or without them.
This complex challenge requires a clear, comprehensive vision that consistently guides a series of individual design decisions at every step of the transformation process.
What might that vision be? NDMA believes that the business-within-a-business (BWB#1) paradigm provides the most powerful foundation for designing a high-performance organization.
Before defining the BWB paradigm, let's set aside some common misconceptions: The BWB paradigm is not outsourcing. It doesn't necessarily mean chargebacks, nor operating internal service functions as profit centers. And certainly it doesn't imply an arm's-length relationship where support staff don't care about the well-being of the corporation.
What, then, is a BWB organization? In a BWB organization, every group is treated as a unique business whose job is to produce products and services for customers -- others within the corporation or externally.
The BWB paradigm brings out the best in people: customer focus, results orientation, teamwork, quality, judicious risk-taking, innovation, efficiency -- all traits of successful entrepreneurs. And it harnesses their entrepreneurial spirit in service of the organization's strategies and shareholders' interests.
Strategic alignment is automatic, since those responsible for key strategies "buy" exactly what they need from their peers.
These suppliers, in turn, "buy" help from other groups. In this way, effective cross-boundary teamwork occurs naturally. Whether or not money actually changes hands, internal relations are businesslike with clear accountabilities for results.
Empowerment is another natural result. In a BWB organization, success is based on pleasing customers. Thus, personal success is aligned with organizational success. Instead of disempowering controls and oversight, governance flows from an internal market that guides everyone to do the right things all the time.
Article on the concept of shared services....
Article on partnership through internal customer-supplier relations....
Publications
VISION: An Introduction to the Business-Within-a-Business Paradigm.
Seminars
The Business-Within-a-Business Paradigm:
new modes of governance in empowered, entrepreneurial organizations
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